I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian--he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God I think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
The poem _Childe Roland_ is unique among Browning's monologues. His
poetry usually is of the noonday and the market-place; but this
might have been written by Coleridge, or Maeterlinck, or Edgar Allan
Poe. It has indeed the "wizard twilight Coleridge knew." The
atmosphere is uncanny and ghoul-haunted: the scenery is a series of
sombre and horrible imaginings.
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